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Ofsted Uses Cisco IP Communications to Help Create Nation- wide Organisation and Improve Services

Cisco IP Communications Links Four Offices and 1,000 Users

LONDON, UK - The Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), the government department responsible for inspecting schools and childcare provision in England, is to deploy a Cisco Systems Internet Protocol Communications (IPC) solution to help it develop a more integrated and national organisation. The Cisco IP Communications (IPC) solution will be delivered over a fixed and wireless converged network infrastructure and is expected to help Ofsted reduce costs by removing the need to pay for inter-office calls.

"Ofsted is creating a national organisation out of the previous regional structure and the deployment of Cisco IP Communications will help to achieve this. We expect the technology to improve services and save money on telephony charges," said Peter Duffy, head of information services for Ofsted. "We put out four tenders for the new network and telephony infrastructure and three bidders proposed Cisco technology."

Ofsted together with technology partners LogicaCMG and BT will replace its existing mix of traditional telephony and data systems with Cisco Local Area Networks (LANs) at its four UK offices in London, Bristol, Manchester and Nottingham and will connect the offices with a Cisco Wide Area Network (WAN). Cisco IP Telephony will be deployed to 1,000 office-based staff. Ofsted is also considering wireless networking at its offices and extending the Cisco IPT solution to 1,500 home-based inspectors with Cisco IP-Softphones integrated into laptops. The Cisco solution will help Ofsted make communications more effective by improving functions such as the ability to forward external calls instantly to staff at any office and support video conferencing.

Ofsted will use Cisco Catalyst 4500 Series Switches and Cisco Catalyst 3750 Series Switches to create the LANs and WAN infrastructure. The Cisco IPC solution will comprise 1,000 Cisco 7900 Series IP handsets, some with colour screens and some with video conferencing capability, Cisco CallManager software and Cisco Unity for unified messaging.

"The deployment of Cisco IP Communications in a high profile government agency like Ofsted is a significant win for Cisco because it reinforces our position as one of the leading providers of communications technology to UK government," said David Critchley, Director - Public Sector, Cisco Systems UK. "Cisco technology is a key enabler in helping national organisations such as Ofsted to improve operational efficiency, control costs, and increase collaboration so that they can have the means to raise the level of service they offer to the community."

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